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Frugal Travel Guy Blog To Launch “Rookie Traveler Tips” Section, Contest

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Free travel expert and his daughter hope to educate a younger

Frugal Travel "Rookie" Shannon

generation of travelers.

 

January 10, 2011 (HILTON HEAD, SC) — Rick Ingersoll, author of The Frugal Travel Guy blog, and his 26-year-old daughter Shannon are about to launch the new “Rookie Traveler Tips” section of the blog, which will include a monthly contest. They will ask readers to submit their best “rookie travel tips” to Shannon via blog comments. She will post the tips she finds the most useful to her, as a rookie, on Fridays. The last week of each month, readers will vote for the best of her choices. The winning tipster will receive a $100 gift card.

 

“And all of us will end up more educated for the effort,” Ingersoll said.

 

The goal behind the Rookie Traveler Tips section and contest, which are slated to being in February, is to attract and educate a younger generation of “travel hackers” – people who travel the world for a fraction of the usual cost by using techniques to accumulate frequent flier miles, hotel and airline vouchers, and other perks for frugal travel.

 

“Shannon and her age group are not used to the game of travel hacking,” said Ingersoll, a retired mortgage banker who started his blog to teach others how to enjoy free or frugal travel, especially those don’t think they can afford to travel. His blog now receives over 4000 page views per day. “We need to be educate Shannon and other young folks by offering them the best tips we know.”

 

Tips can cover any element of travel, from frequent flier mile promotions to ways to organize a trip or keep clothes fresh in the process. “Anything, really,” he said. But he stressed that the tips must be clear, concise, and easy to understand.

 

Rick Ingersoll, The Frugal Travel Guy

“If a tip involves steps, write them out,” he said. “Don’t just say ‘American Airlines has a new credit card with an awards program.’ Give her the steps: ‘Go to this website, click on that, enter this, next week do this.’ Shannon won’t choose a tip that she can’t easily follow or that she doesn’t find useful as a new travel hacker.”

 

The Rookie Traveler Tips section will maintain a list of the best tips for all readers to access whenever they want.

 

“Shannon will set up a more organized system of past posts and archive retrieval so my readers can find the answers to many of their questions without needing to wait for my return email,” Ingersoll said.

 

Also the author of the popular Frugal Travel Guy Handbook, Rick Ingersoll reports that he receives dozens of emails every day from readers who want to report a tip or ask a question about frugal travel. “With the Rookie Travel Tips contest, readers can teach young folks how to play the game and perhaps win a gift card in the process,” he said.

 

For more information on The Frugal Travel Guy blog and to participate in the Rookie Traveler Tips contest, visit http://frugaltravelguy.com.

 

About The Frugal Travel Guy:

Rick Ingersoll, author of The Frugal Travel Guy Blog and The Frugal Travel Guy Handbook, is constantly on the lookout for the best credit card and debit card sign-up bonuses. He posts travel tips daily on debit and credit card deals and on other interesting promotions with the goal of reducing his readers’ travel costs today and for the rest of their lives. He is also available for seminars and speaking engagements. A retired mortgage banker, Ingersoll and his wife live in Hilton Head Island, SC, and Traverse City, MI, when they’re not traveling the globe.

Frequent Flier Expert Reports 1 Million Miles & More in 2010

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Rick Ingersoll © Photography by Anne

Rick Ingersoll amassed the equivalent of 25 free domestic round-trip tickets in one year.

December 16, 2010 (HILTON HEAD, SC) – Using techniques he teaches in his book The Frugal Travel Guy Handbook, author and blogger Rick Ingersoll has reported that he and his wife amassed one million frequent-flier miles in 2010 solely by taking advantage of credit card and debit card sign-up bonuses.

What does that mean in terms of actual travel for, as he puts it, ordinary folks? Twenty-five free domestic round-trip airline tickets for a family, eight to 10 business-class tickets to Europe, or four around-the-world itineraries.

“By maintaining an excellent credit score, we’ve found that applying for credit card signup bonuses can earn us the frequent flier miles we need to travel cheaply and often,” Ingersoll said.

The secret to his success, he says, is maintaining a good credit score and planning carefully:

“The inquiries for each credit card application nick your credit score by two to five points. But if you pay on time, under most circumstances that is the extent of the damage. And after we have reached the minimum spend to earn the sign-up bonus, we just put the card away and cancel it when the annual renewal bill comes due. The inquiries fall off your credit report in two years.”

One of the many offers he and his wife, Katy, took advantage of this year was a British Airways promotion that offered 100,000 miles for using its credit card and paying the $75 application fee. Together, the couple netted 200,000 miles on that deal alone.

With application and debit card fees, Ingersoll reports that he spent $1130 to earn over one million frequent flier miles – remarkably less than he would have spend if he paid for his future travel excursions.

Other Perks: Yet credit card/debit card bonuses aren’t the only techniques Ingersoll used in 2010 to get more miles and savings on travel. As he discusses in The Frugal Guy Handbook, he also used such opportunities as “Mistake Fares,” “Fare Wars,” “Rental Car Promos,” and – one of his favorites – “The Bump.”

“The Bump” is Ingersoll’s term for actively volunteering to be “bumped” from a crowded/over-sold flight. Airlines are required by law to compensate “bumped” passengers.  On a recent trip to Alaska, he paid $400 for a ticket but got himself “bumped” so often that he ended the day with $1200 in travel vouchers.

Rick Ingersoll is frequently quoted in the travel media as an expert on free and frugal travel techniques that assure quality travel especially for those who think they can’t afford to travel.

For more information on Rick Ingersoll and his free-travel techniques, visit his blog at http://frugaltravelguy.blogspot.com.

About Rick Ingersoll:

Rick Ingersoll, author of The Frugal Travel Guy blog  and The Frugal Travel Guy Handbook, is constantly on the lookout for the best credit card and debit card sign-up bonuses. He posts travel tips daily on debit and credit card deals and on other interesting promotions with the goal of reducing his readers’ travel costs today and for the rest of their lives. He is also available for seminars and speaking engagements. A retired mortgage banker, Ingersoll and his wife live in Hilton Head Island, SC, and Traverse City, MI, when they’re not traveling the globe.